


A Mistletoe Projectile

by Trista_zevkia



Category: Jeeves & Wooster, Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse
Genre: First Kiss, M/M, Yule, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-10
Updated: 2011-12-10
Packaged: 2017-10-27 05:51:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/292320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trista_zevkia/pseuds/Trista_zevkia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mistletoe verses Jeeves</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Mistletoe Projectile

Leaving the lift, I forced myself to not whistle jauntily as I had been all the way across the metrop. Exchanging my hat with the newly purchased one in my bag, I keyed myself into the flat. Jeeves was standing at the ready to take my hat, coat, gloves and any Christmas shopping I carried, though I’m not sure how he knew I was entering. I was out wasting the day and hadn’t set a time for returning. I can’t help the grin as I watch his eyes move up to the new topper, the left eyebrow desperate to jump into his hairline. I drop my bags and slide out of my coat as I ask.

“So Jeeves, what do you think of the new topper? Be honest!”

“Sir, I would have thought a top hat would be considered old fashioned by you, and not something you would purchase without a direct need.” He says this to the closet while hanging up my coat, but I notice it’s not really an opinion of like or dislike. More like him questioning the wisdom of me buying it without his assistance.

“It is frightfully old, isn’t it? But it wasn’t terribly expensive either.”

“I am relieved to hear that, Sir.”

“So you don’t like it?”

“Sir, the formal top hat has a place, but this particular specimen does not seem to be particularly well constructed.” Jeeves is holding out his hand, expecting me to hand over this p. s. of top hats, but I dance out of reach. He closes the door and turns to face me, curiosity evident in the slight crinkle on the edges of his eyes.

“You haven’t seen what makes this hat so special, it’s better constructed than you think!”

I reach up like I’m about to doff it at a passing lady and push the hidden mechanism in the brim. I feel the top pop, but I can’t see it. Instead I see Jeeves’s eyes narrow at what emerges. I knew better than to think he would laugh, but he looks almost mad! When faced with such a reaction I take a few steps back to look in the mirror. The hat has indeed worked as advertised, so I look back at the slowly emerging stuffed frog.

“I hope it doesn’t offend your sartorial senses too much, but I thought it was a great gag!”

“Sir, is your hat meant to project all greenery or only sprigs of mistletoe?” The rummy way he says mistletoe makes me wonder what he could have against a plant.

“Just mistletoe, so I’ll have to get fresh sprigs before I take it out.”

“You intend to wear that item in public, Sir?” Now the frost in his voice causes the mistletoe to wilt, but it brings out my iron willpower.

“I wouldn’t have bought it otherwise, Jeeves.” He’s too busy glaring at the sprig to even notice my tone. What could a tiny bit of plant have ever have done to earn such malice?

“Sir, may I ask what you intend to do if someone should take you up on the offer?”

He’s lost me with his mental aerobics and I have to ask what I am offering that people might accept. “What offer?”

“The traditional kiss under the mistletoe, Sir.” I color a little at that, I’d been so caught up in the cleverness of it I missed out on the obviousness!

“Fair point, so I’ll make sure not to wear it around marriage minded bezels.”

“Where else is there to wear it, Sir?”

“Drones club, I guess. Nobody there likely to kiss the Wooster mug, eh?”

I slide back for another look in the mirror. Strange how a bit of greenery falling from your hat can actually flatter some chaps, though I’m not sure what that says about me. Greenery adorns well the willowy frame that attracts the marital prospect?

“Actually, Jeeves, maybe I should wear it around the fillies. You probably don’t know this, considering the number of times you’ve had to save me from marriage with your magnificent brain, but I’ll let you in on a secret. The young master is a terrible kisser. You’d think, from the sheer number of bezels attempting to be the person who kisses me for the rest of my life, that I’d be better at it! But never a complement and a few complaints later, I am forced to concede the point. I bet you could give me a few pointers, as you do everything else so well! Actually, that might not be a bad idea! Jeeves teaching the y.m. to kiss under the mistletoe.”

When I don’t get the immediate response I expect when dealing with Jeeves, not even the gentle cough of a sheep about to suggest a Highland cow needs a trim, I turn to look at him. He’s staring at the kitchen door, but I’d bet he isn’t seeing the door. I don’t usually have to tell him the dumb things I say are unimportant or jokes, but for some reason I need to now.

“Jeeves?” My call snaps him back to reality, his head snapping around to look at me. When I see the tinge of pink on his cheekbones, I forget what I was about to say so I have to ask him. “Jeeves?”

“Sir, kissing is not something you can learn from informative reading or critical discussions. Repeated practical applications would be the only effective method, and that hat will help you with such an educational activity.”

The stuffed frog is fighting to make an appearance in his voice and face, but is losing the fight to something I can’t name. I don’t know how I’ve offended Jeeves this time, so I move over to him to offer a compromise.

“I’ll let you destroy the hat, after I get one kiss under the mistletoe. Sound fair to you?”

“One kiss, Sir?” Jeeves swallows but looks back up at the hat, as if to steel his resolve to seeing me wear it one more time.

“I bought it for laughs, but you’re right about people being more interested in kissing than laughing. One kiss and the hat is yours.”

I almost expect him to biff off and find some filly to kiss me so he can destroy it in the next five minutes. The hand on my chin, tilting my head up makes me think he had a filly stashed in the kitchen for just such an emergency, except it’s his large, manly, gentle, skilled hand on my chin. I realize he’s about to kiss me and try to ready myself for an educational opportunity. I register the lips as soft, then that they belong to Jeeves. When I figure out that the soft lips kissing me belong to Jeeves, my brain vacates my skull. All I can do is hang on and let Jeeves have his way, my own iron will and determination have no place here!

When he pulls away, my lungs go back to pulling oxygen out of the air in heavy pants. There is something about the way he is looking at me that says now would be a good time for my brain to return. While I wait for it, I get an eyeful of what I guess I’d have to call Reggie, because he looks like stuffed frog Jeeves has deserted him, skipping off into the sunset with my brain. His lips look larger than normal and I’ve never seen so much color in his profile. His eyes are darker somehow and the left side of his hair is messed up.

My right hand twitches at this observation, and suddenly I know what his hair feels like, as if my hand had dared to traipse through those ebony locks. He turns and walks away, Reggie fleeing from the room. No bow, no words and I hear the kitchen door thump when he goes through it, so it’s human Reggie and not Jeeves the paragon.

Wondering if he touched my hair, I reach up to feel it and find the hat. It doesn’t seem important anymore, but we made a deal. One kiss and the hat was his, so I should take it to him. I didn’t expect him to hate the hat so much he’d kiss me himself to get rid of it, so I had no way of predicting how he looked after the kiss. How did he look? I can instantly conjure up the image of him, but what are the words for that? Reggie, human, vulnerable, hopeful, shocked, brain melted.

Wait, my brain melted every time somebody started talking about marriage. How could this hat affect Jeeves so much that his brain reacted the same way as mine? I should ask him, because I wasn’t smart enough to figure it out so I walked into the kitchen. Jeeves is standing in front of the open icebox, looking for something or making lists of what we need, I suppose. I don’t know why, but I get a rush of pride when I see his hair is still mussed.

“Jeeves, you forgot your hat.” He stiffens before his name is out of my mouth, but he doesn’t turn around. This is almost rude behavior, and for Jeeves it is unheard of!

“My hat, Sir?”

“We made a deal, one kiss and the hat was yours. I didn’t expect you to be so eager to destroy the thing, but there you go.” I’m bothered by the way he’s not looking at me, spelunking instead in the icebox.

“The item is yours, Sir. I simply thought it inadvisable for you to wear it in public, as you are so opposed to matrimony.”

“You could wear it, unless you are equally o. to m. Not that you need practice, I think you are a wonderful kisser.”

“Thank you for saying so, Sir.”

“If it’s not too wrong for me to ask, how bad am I?” In the stretch of silence that follows, I find myself wondering how many bezel’s he has to compare me against.

“What your technique lacks in refinement is made up for in enthusiasm, Sir.”

“Such praise, coming from you? You’ve just set my mind at ease on the kissing issue, I now know I’m not the worst that ever lived! Such a compliment is so thrilling, I could…” Kiss you, Jeeves, is how that sentence finished, except the truth of it stuck in my throat.

I would very much like to kiss him again! Yet, amongst married couples, kissing lead to other things. If said k. lead to o. t. with Jeeves what would that mean? Could I be an invert? What about Jeeves? I’ve known for a while that I love him and want him in my life forever, but not in a kissing kind of way, or is it?

Confused thoughts began racing around my head faster than I could pin them down to think them, so I pulled off the hat. For something to do, while Jeeves stared into the icebox, I started resetting the mechanism to release the sprig. With that done, I look and see Jeeves hasn’t moved from his post at the icebox. I couldn’t say why I do most of what I do, but my excuse for what I do here is that the hat was now his. I walk over and place it on his head.

The silly thing is too small for his lovely head and it slides as he turns to face me. I think Fate was shaking her head at me, much the way my Aunts do when I’m being thick, because when Jeeves reaches up the catch the hat his thumb triggers the springing sprig. Between Aunt Fate, the kissing requirement of mistletoe and the glimpse of Reggie I had under the Jeeves, I did what I had to do. I leaned in and showed him just how enthusiastic I could be.

It’s amazing how, even if you master the trick of breathing through your nose while kissing, you still wind up out of breath eventually. When the breathing need forces me to let him up, I realize I’ve been smashing his head into the icebox frame behind him. Before I can apologize, I see that he doesn’t care. I don’t think there is any blue left in his eyes, and all of his hair is showing signs of tampering. The hat has disappeared in the wake of my enthusiasm, but I can’t take my eyes off of Reggie long enough to look for it.

“I’ve found a fault in the hat’s design.” As the words come out of my panting mouth, I can see him reaching for the stuffed frog to find an answer.

“Indeed, Sir?” Only the words come from Jeeves. There is a breathlessness quality to his voice, which tells me Reggie is awaiting my answer.

“The kissing hat assumes the wearer wants to kiss as many people as possible.”

He’s staring at me like that would be bleeding obvious to anybody but me, but that’s not my point. Options are nice, and I don’t want to force him into anything, particularly before he has a chance to run this through his brain. I don’t want to be one of those fillies, casually informing him that we’re going to be together forever and I’m afraid that telling him how I feel will be the equivalent of Florence Craye’s last engagement to me. So I have to do so in a subtle way, not my strong suit.

“I have just discovered that I only want to kiss you, preferably for the rest of my life. Do you need the hat?”

“Sir, have you considered,” I’m not sure if his pause is to clear his throat or find safe words, but my brain is making up for deserting me earlier. He’s not sparing a thought for what he wants, because he already knows! I have to make him tell me, because he’s the psychic-what’s it.

“Tell me how you feel, Reg, and we’ll work out the details, later. Whatever you feel, we’ll talk and think about it, but I need to know. I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to say that, didn’t want to pressure you by calling you Reg and telling you that I want you to stay with me forever and I love y!”

Jeeves sucked the rest of the word out of my mouth and filled the void with his tongue. He was very enthusiastic about kissing too, but this time he pulled me to him. He was taller, broader than I, capable of carrying more on his shoulders than I, so I don’t understand why our bodies fit together so perfectly. I just folded into him, long arms encircling his stature easily.

My hands were moving, tracing, learning the feel of him, until I hit his release mechanism. Not a mechanism, per se, but my hand found and squeezed something soft and firm and something hard began to grow between us. I realize what it is as my matching bit of corpus rises to greet it. Being around Jeeves has made me smarter and I moan as understanding falls into place.

“Sir, are you well?”

I think that’s what Jeeves said, because I wouldn’t let him pull far enough out of the kiss to speak properly. At his questions though, I felt it would have been rude of me not to answer. Slowly, I relaxed the arm holding his head to mine and leaned back, just enough to talk.

“Beyond well, old fruit. But I need you to get us out of these clothes expedwhatsit.”

“Expeditiously, Sir?”

“Right-ho!” His magic hands start to do their job, but it’s hard to wait patiently, so I find myself babbling. “I wish you’d told the young master he’s a young moron before this! Stripped me down and explained just what I was missing by not kissing you night and day. If the only reason you stayed with me was to get a chance at the Wooster corpus, I don’t know how I’ll keep you around, now that the corpus, mug and squishy soul stuff all belong to y!”

Another surprise Reg kiss, ending the ‘you’ before it was two thirds of the way through. I didn’t mind at all, I’ve been told to shut up worse way. But none better! I think Reg is dancing with me, until I spare a glance for our surroundings. Well, I see the bed behind him and that’s all I’m concerned with. The bed could still be in the furniture store for all I know or care, I just have to get him on it! Don’t know what we’ll do when we get there, but Reg will figure something out! I’m shoving him backward, but he surprises me and my back winds up on the bed. An arm across my chest holds me down when he pulls away to do some more ruddy talking!

“It is a shame that you equate genuine love with pressuring somebody into agreeing to something. I promise you, that I will show you what love actually is, because I love you!”

I don’t have time to figure out that statement, as I’m hearing his words ricochet around my skull. He goes back to kissing, and I join in. I’m going to have kissing, sex and a life with Reginald Jeeves!

God blessed me indeed!


End file.
